A Sense of Doubt blog post #2760 - And now I am home - Writer's Retreat Recap

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2760 - And now I am home - Writer's Retreat Recap

I am returned home and have been for over a week by the time I got around to finishing this post.

I am not writing at length about what I learned from the trip because really I can boil down six takeaway realizations, lessons, I gained from my time away. They all have to do with writing.

the LESSONS

1. Stop second guessing.

2. Any progress is good progress.

3. I don't have to show everything.

4. I am writing all the time even when it's just in my head.

5. If I want to log significant time, make an appointment with myself. Put it on my calendar.

6. Be less hard on myself.

SECOND GUESSING

As I work on a novel, I have lots of ideas that I capture in big files of notes journal style, which means just writing whatever is in my head into the file.

But then as I consider ideas and how to execute them, I second guess myself, which leads to a lack of forward progress as I spin my wheels, rewriting and changing what I already have.

Sometimes second guessing is easy and natural. For instance, I just wrote a scene in which a character gets bad news and starts running. Well, she's the police chief and seeing the chief of police running through town to the high school is not keeping a situation low key. So I am changing that. She would want to run and then stop her impulse.

But for bigger plot and character stuff, once I have a pretty good plan in place, I need to leave it alone and keep writing. I can always change it later. But second guessing and endless re-dos are why I have not finished a novel since 1993.

ANY PROGRESS IS GOOD PROGRESS

Hence my new rule of at least 15 minutes a day of writing. I can find 15 minutes in any day, right?

As long as I spend the time WRITING the actual narrative, then this progress is good progress.

First drafts are supposed to be shitty anyway, right?

I DON'T HAVE TO SHOW EVERYTHING

Unlike the show don't tell advice that is so popular, I have tendency to show too much, to think I need to show every moment, every little detail. But that's not needed. For instance, in my book, it starts with the discovery of the first murder victim. The narrative then backs up in time just a little and for not too many pages to set up the main characters and situations. When the police chief gets the call, the reader knows what it is. I don't have to show the call as it is not important by itself.

I AM WRITING ALL THE TIME

This is not a new one. None of these are, really. I have thought of them all before, and the the first two have been constant refrains for years though apparently I need to keep reminding myself.

Writing all the time refers to how I write in my head (as many writers do - all writers?). I am brainstorming ideas, I am plotting, I am working out back story, I am refining and building character, and I am writing actual narrative. 

This concept is related to the "stop mid-sentence" advice. I think it's better to stop writing for the day right in the middle of something, even a sentence, so I know right where to start the next day rather than writing to a stopping point. I stole this idea from a famous writer. I don't remember who.

If I want to log significant time, make an appointment with myself. Put it on my calendar.

Since I am so easily distracted and/or drawn into a work sinkhole, and yet I am able to keep appointments when these are made, if I want to complete a significant amount of writing, say like 2-3 hours at least, perhaps I put it on the calendar and treat it like an appointment.

The other writing can be stolen time. That 15-30 minutes fits whenever and wherever it fits. But I big chunk of time may need to be scheduled to hold myself to it.

Be less hard on myself.

One of my biggest problems, and I am sure not just for me, is that I always think I can do more than I can in a day. In the morning of a day I have completely for work at home, I think I can do seven things, so many things, and then I can really only do two or three of them. And then when I only do two of seven things, I feel like a failure even though I worked very hard all day with very little down time and often, like on Saturdays, as late as 10:30 p.m.

So, I am determined to be easier on myself. To not beat myself up for not doing seven things because that's unrealistic. And maybe, I need to get better at setting realistic expectations for what I can do in a day and be happy if I get done what I can get done. Even if I continue to set lofty goals, I am trying to be better at accepting that what I could get done is A LOT and to be happy with that productivity.

Also, I am running another time management and analysis assignment in one of my classes this fall, and I track my time data as well. For the Fall, I want to track not just what I spend my time on, but when I log "work time," what work am I doing and how long does it take me to complete tasks that I have to do often, such as grading a set of persuasive essays with the audio feedback and rubric, which is very time consuming. The whole point of time analysis is to examine how I can better spend the most precious resource of my life: time.

I am still determined to write every day, at least five days a week, and to reach a certain weekly out]put.

Since I am writing these words NINE days after the alleged publication date of this post, I have seen how little I have managed to log that writing time: two of the nine days.

Again, in not feeling like a failure and being kind time myself, two days is better than zero days. If I can make it at least three days next week, then I have made progress. That's my other problem: I want everything all at once, NOW, and things do not work that way, especially NOVEL writing.

Okay, back to work.

Since I have fallen nine days behind (twelve was my record), I am going to put the blog in REPRINT mode for two weeks and then probably simple shares and one things until I can get back on track and stay ahead.

The goals of the blog work are to stay active, to stay ahead of the daily deadlines, to work on it at night or early in the morning when I am not typically working anyway, to not use it as an excuse not to write fiction as it's easier and less anxiety-producing, and to be less "scheduled" and do whatever I want to do and what is easiest. Catching up and getting ahead with at least two weeks of reprints will be easiest.

I close with where I stayed on the Writing Retreat.

As always, thanks for tuning in.

Here's where I was staying in Eureka with photos. You can find it on AirBnb.

3335 Cottage Street, Suite 1
Eureka, CA 95503

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2209.08 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2624 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.